JUPITER

Jupiter's signature stripes and swirls are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. The dark orange stripes are called belts, while the lighter bands are called zones, and they flow east and west in opposite directions. Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years.

The king of planets was named for Jupiter, king of the gods in Roman mythology. Most of its moons are also named for mythological characters, figures associated with Jupiter or his Greek counterpart, Zeus.

Captured by the NASA Juno Probe, the RAW data for this image was obtained from JunoCam with post-processing carried out in WinJupos, PixInsight, Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.

For more information on this image, and many more, please visit the ‘galaxies’, ‘nebulae’, ‘nightscapes’ and ‘planets’ galleries via the navigation panel at the top of this page.


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